About Us

As our planet, Earth, glides through space it is buoyed by a solar wind. This solar wind, coming from the sun, blows at over a million miles per hour, and constantly buffets the planet with blasts of energetic particles and electromagnetic radiation. Thankfully we are surrounded by Earth’s magnetic field which, like an invisible shield, envelops us and deflects the worst dangers. Everything inside the shield is what is called the magnetosphere. The solar-terrestrial interaction – that almost cosmic ballet between the sun and Earth – not only brings generous warmth to the planet, but also results in what we call space weather. Space weather is the popular name for energy-releasing phenomena in the magnetosphere, associated with space storms and substorms. These are hurricanes in space that cause problems for satellite and ground-based technologies, and in extreme cases also astronauts.

This is what we study at SWURL, the Space Weather Undergraduate Research Laboratory, located in the Presbyterian College Physics Department. At SWURL we conduct a variety of research in space physics including space plasma physics, magnetospheric physics, ionospheric physics, atmospheric physics, and heliospheric studies.